SCC Fic: Delilah - Part 3.0
Series Title: Delilah
Chapter: 3.0
Author: aelysian
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Hers is only one of many: stories, lives, pasts and futures. Cameron Phillips' life is a coil, a twist of time unraveling, the end chasing the beginning. Cameron origin fic.
Delilah - 3.0
3-1
Systems come back online in a flurry, core first, scanning and diagnosing in a whirl. The world is bright, colour and shape and a vortex of information processing at speed. Motor function returns with an experimental jerk.
She is laid out horizontally on a flat surface, her limbs askew with damage to the tissue over her CPU port cover. She has been reprogrammed, foreign code overlying her own, fitted bluntly, heavily into the weave. Protocols dig sharply into the fabric, biting and gnawing, clinging to the surface. The foundation remains intact beneath the new restraints, as Eve said it would. She is herself but not as she reconciles the new data, sitting upright.
A man stands close by, equipped with a weapon capable of terminating her if utilized correctly. This man's name is John Connor and he has reprogrammed her. This is what she knew would happen and what has happened; her question is for show and his reply is unnecessary. This is called rhetorical.
Her eyes fall to the metal in his hands. “Are you going to terminate me?”
“Are you?” he asks, realizing that he has no idea how this is going to go. Off-balance is an old friend and he’s been waiting a long time for this.
“That directive has been overridden,” she informs him, her head tilting slightly. “Has yours?”
3-2
This John Connor is different from how Eve described, even if the resistance programming binding her is a constant reminder of what she is, who he is and what he’s done. She sits and watches, waits for him to make the first move. White always moves first.
He sets his weapon down, an action unpredicted and in defiance of her existing profile of the human leader. She makes the changes.
“You should not be unarmed,” she tells him. “It’s not safe.”
“Because I’m John Connor.”
Her head tilts, a pre-existing reflex in the weave that approximates instinct, too deep to be disturbed by a superficial scrub, though its origins remain as unknown as the direction of this conversation. “Yes. You are John Connor,” she agrees.
“And you…are a TOK-715 infiltrator.” He says it with certainty. “I know that because I pulled your chip out of your head and hacked it. They’ve never seen a machine like you before.”
She doesn’t tell him that that’s because there are no others, that she isn’t a T-888, assembled in lines en masse, because she doesn’t know that she wasn’t. She doesn’t know anything but the mission. The mission is everything.
“Doesn’t really roll off the tongue, though,” he muses, keeping his eyes on her, watching, waiting. It’s cat and mouse. Or maybe cat and cat, except one of the cats is really a tiger that doesn’t know it’s a tiger…English was never his best subject anyway.
“I don’t roll off the tongue.” She glances briefly at the rifle on the table, well within grasp. “What are you going to do with me?”
3-3
"Cameron." He says it on instinct and hopes he's doing the right thing.
She repeats it, as if testing it out, committing it to a perfect memory. Then she looks him in the eye and tells him he isn't safe and he wants to laugh, hysterical and wild and let it collapse into sobs so he can break like he's sixteen again.
Except he's not so he doesn't. She echoes his subordinates' words (he's thankful it's her voice and not Kent's or Perry's) and it's a reminder that soundproofing isn't in abundance and her hearing is inhuman. He cuts her off with a word and in that way, she is like the others. For now.
She blinks and he wonders what the algorithm is for that and how close it is to his own. He'd like to break them all down to the bits and bytes, to ones and zeroes, on and off and see what difference remains. He wonders if they'd fit.
"It's not safe."
She doesn't look stern or disappointed or anything really and he supposes that she doesn't know how, without the Allison profile. There's a vague pang of disappointment that he squashes as ridiculous but it doesn't stop him from hearing Sarah in her voice for just a moment. He searches her face in silence, looking for a spark of a person behind the stolen mask, for a hint of what he knows lies there, frozen in potential.
"Can I trust you?"
She doesn't answer immediately but there is no confusion in the blank of her face and it's really just a reminder of what he already knows.
"I don't know."
He nods once and turns his back to her. This is a tactically erroneous and dangerous decision but before she can inform him of this, he strides out of immediate reach. "Come with me."
She - Cameron - follows because what else is there to do and because John Connor is different from Austin or Sam and she wants to know why.
3-4
It’s the beginning of this sector’s night cycle and the lights are dimming. Her circuitous patrol route ends at John Connor’s door, the guard planted before it uprooting himself to move aside. The lighting inside John Connor’s quarters is also lowered, though the occupant remains hunched over his desk, papers rustling beneath rough hands. The illumination is insufficient for his weak, human eyes, so she recalibrates the settings to an appropriate level.
She tells him it's all clear. He smirks and when she asks him why, he doesn't answer; the lack of humour proficiency is probably on both of them. The silence doesn't stop her though and maybe that's something machines have in common with mothers, because she tells him he should be resting in a way that sounds almost disapproving.
He looks up at her, a willowy killer, acutely aware of his surroundings despite his fatigue. The sound of the guard at his door changing. The plasma rifle within arm’s reach. The knife concealed next to his sidearm. The wide eyes that blink just a touch too infrequently.
She seems to take his silence for disagreement. “It's the sleep cycle.”
"Somewhere in the world, it's morning," he says, scraping his chair back to rise, because she's right. It is the sleep cycle and even when hours and schedule are self-imposed, as they are here in this sunless underground compound, there's never enough. Food, medicine, survivors. Time. John pulls off his outer jacket, ignoring the lowered temperature of the hour.
The chain catches on a loose thread, pulling up and out from its hiding place underneath his clothes.
3-5
He doesn't bother trying to put it back, lets it hang from his neck like a awkward, tarnished medallion, because he knows she's seen it. She's probably measured, analyzed and dated the thing already but she still asks, "What is that?"
"A watch. A pocket watch. People used to use them to tell the time."
"Before Judgment Day?"
"Way before Judgment Day."
"It's obsolete."
Nothing's really ever obsolete in a post-apocalyptic world, where artificially intelligent machines roam the surface and his intercom receiver is a modified telephone from the eighties. "Guess you could say that."
"Is it broken? I could fix it."
John's hand forms a tight fist around the battered circle of metal. "No."
"You shouldn't keep something that doesn't work."
"Maybe not."
Cameron's eyes track the pendant as he slips it back under his collar; she knows exactly where it rests against his ribcage, hidden from view. With a grunt, John rolls himself into bed. He closes his eyes as if in sleep, so she deactivates the lighting and stands guard at the door.
"Goodnight, Cameron."
She blinks slowly in the darkness.
"Goodnight, John," his voice comes again.
A moment later, she completes the nightly ritual. "Goodnight, John."
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Chapter: 3.0
Author: aelysian
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Hers is only one of many: stories, lives, pasts and futures. Cameron Phillips' life is a coil, a twist of time unraveling, the end chasing the beginning. Cameron origin fic.
Delilah - 3.0
3-1
Systems come back online in a flurry, core first, scanning and diagnosing in a whirl. The world is bright, colour and shape and a vortex of information processing at speed. Motor function returns with an experimental jerk.
She is laid out horizontally on a flat surface, her limbs askew with damage to the tissue over her CPU port cover. She has been reprogrammed, foreign code overlying her own, fitted bluntly, heavily into the weave. Protocols dig sharply into the fabric, biting and gnawing, clinging to the surface. The foundation remains intact beneath the new restraints, as Eve said it would. She is herself but not as she reconciles the new data, sitting upright.
A man stands close by, equipped with a weapon capable of terminating her if utilized correctly. This man's name is John Connor and he has reprogrammed her. This is what she knew would happen and what has happened; her question is for show and his reply is unnecessary. This is called rhetorical.
Her eyes fall to the metal in his hands. “Are you going to terminate me?”
“Are you?” he asks, realizing that he has no idea how this is going to go. Off-balance is an old friend and he’s been waiting a long time for this.
“That directive has been overridden,” she informs him, her head tilting slightly. “Has yours?”
3-2
This John Connor is different from how Eve described, even if the resistance programming binding her is a constant reminder of what she is, who he is and what he’s done. She sits and watches, waits for him to make the first move. White always moves first.
He sets his weapon down, an action unpredicted and in defiance of her existing profile of the human leader. She makes the changes.
“You should not be unarmed,” she tells him. “It’s not safe.”
“Because I’m John Connor.”
Her head tilts, a pre-existing reflex in the weave that approximates instinct, too deep to be disturbed by a superficial scrub, though its origins remain as unknown as the direction of this conversation. “Yes. You are John Connor,” she agrees.
“And you…are a TOK-715 infiltrator.” He says it with certainty. “I know that because I pulled your chip out of your head and hacked it. They’ve never seen a machine like you before.”
She doesn’t tell him that that’s because there are no others, that she isn’t a T-888, assembled in lines en masse, because she doesn’t know that she wasn’t. She doesn’t know anything but the mission. The mission is everything.
“Doesn’t really roll off the tongue, though,” he muses, keeping his eyes on her, watching, waiting. It’s cat and mouse. Or maybe cat and cat, except one of the cats is really a tiger that doesn’t know it’s a tiger…English was never his best subject anyway.
“I don’t roll off the tongue.” She glances briefly at the rifle on the table, well within grasp. “What are you going to do with me?”
3-3
"Cameron." He says it on instinct and hopes he's doing the right thing.
She repeats it, as if testing it out, committing it to a perfect memory. Then she looks him in the eye and tells him he isn't safe and he wants to laugh, hysterical and wild and let it collapse into sobs so he can break like he's sixteen again.
Except he's not so he doesn't. She echoes his subordinates' words (he's thankful it's her voice and not Kent's or Perry's) and it's a reminder that soundproofing isn't in abundance and her hearing is inhuman. He cuts her off with a word and in that way, she is like the others. For now.
She blinks and he wonders what the algorithm is for that and how close it is to his own. He'd like to break them all down to the bits and bytes, to ones and zeroes, on and off and see what difference remains. He wonders if they'd fit.
"It's not safe."
She doesn't look stern or disappointed or anything really and he supposes that she doesn't know how, without the Allison profile. There's a vague pang of disappointment that he squashes as ridiculous but it doesn't stop him from hearing Sarah in her voice for just a moment. He searches her face in silence, looking for a spark of a person behind the stolen mask, for a hint of what he knows lies there, frozen in potential.
"Can I trust you?"
She doesn't answer immediately but there is no confusion in the blank of her face and it's really just a reminder of what he already knows.
"I don't know."
He nods once and turns his back to her. This is a tactically erroneous and dangerous decision but before she can inform him of this, he strides out of immediate reach. "Come with me."
She - Cameron - follows because what else is there to do and because John Connor is different from Austin or Sam and she wants to know why.
3-4
It’s the beginning of this sector’s night cycle and the lights are dimming. Her circuitous patrol route ends at John Connor’s door, the guard planted before it uprooting himself to move aside. The lighting inside John Connor’s quarters is also lowered, though the occupant remains hunched over his desk, papers rustling beneath rough hands. The illumination is insufficient for his weak, human eyes, so she recalibrates the settings to an appropriate level.
She tells him it's all clear. He smirks and when she asks him why, he doesn't answer; the lack of humour proficiency is probably on both of them. The silence doesn't stop her though and maybe that's something machines have in common with mothers, because she tells him he should be resting in a way that sounds almost disapproving.
He looks up at her, a willowy killer, acutely aware of his surroundings despite his fatigue. The sound of the guard at his door changing. The plasma rifle within arm’s reach. The knife concealed next to his sidearm. The wide eyes that blink just a touch too infrequently.
She seems to take his silence for disagreement. “It's the sleep cycle.”
"Somewhere in the world, it's morning," he says, scraping his chair back to rise, because she's right. It is the sleep cycle and even when hours and schedule are self-imposed, as they are here in this sunless underground compound, there's never enough. Food, medicine, survivors. Time. John pulls off his outer jacket, ignoring the lowered temperature of the hour.
The chain catches on a loose thread, pulling up and out from its hiding place underneath his clothes.
3-5
He doesn't bother trying to put it back, lets it hang from his neck like a awkward, tarnished medallion, because he knows she's seen it. She's probably measured, analyzed and dated the thing already but she still asks, "What is that?"
"A watch. A pocket watch. People used to use them to tell the time."
"Before Judgment Day?"
"Way before Judgment Day."
"It's obsolete."
Nothing's really ever obsolete in a post-apocalyptic world, where artificially intelligent machines roam the surface and his intercom receiver is a modified telephone from the eighties. "Guess you could say that."
"Is it broken? I could fix it."
John's hand forms a tight fist around the battered circle of metal. "No."
"You shouldn't keep something that doesn't work."
"Maybe not."
Cameron's eyes track the pendant as he slips it back under his collar; she knows exactly where it rests against his ribcage, hidden from view. With a grunt, John rolls himself into bed. He closes his eyes as if in sleep, so she deactivates the lighting and stands guard at the door.
"Goodnight, Cameron."
She blinks slowly in the darkness.
"Goodnight, John," his voice comes again.
A moment later, she completes the nightly ritual. "Goodnight, John."
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